The life of every great side is finite. There is no reason to believe City will dominate from this day forth any more than Preston North End winning the first league and FA Cup double back in 1888/9 led to them winning everything. There are simply too many permutations.
It is possible, and happens in every league, that certain clubs can maintain themselves at the top of their national game. That’s how we got the Milan clubs, Bayern, Juve, Boca Juniots or Flamengo and so on in the first place, but they cannot and will never be able to guarantee the silverware necessary to attract the managers, players and investment required. They are as subject to bad managers, bad signings or a collapse in their youth systems as any.
City are no different. Guardiola is already probably closer to the date he leaves City than the day he arrived. By the same token once multi-millionaire players have won all the trophies the English game has to offer their susceptibility to a call from Real Madrid or Barcelona increases. There is no way Countinho at Liverpool, Kane at Tottenham or de Bruyne at City will finish their careers at those clubs. At some point a foreign club will make a move, and when I say “a foreign club” there are now only two with that power.
I think the Premier League is unique in that it is the only one in the world where any club can beat any other. That’s doesn’t tend to happen elsewhere.
As for the sums spent on new players, that again does not necessarily mean anything. PSG, the second highest spenders in the list have doled out that money for what? To win Ligue 1? Well they do that already. They have invested in the hope of winning the Champions League. Well, they won’t, will they? They’ve drawn Real Madrid in the last sixteen.
After a few years of relative disappointment there is every possibility that four of the five remaining English clubs in the Champions League will make it into the last eight. Spurs are capable of beating Juventus, and Chelsea will struggle against Barcelona. Questions will be asked if the other three fail to qualify against Basel, Porto and Sevilla.
I suppose the above screed could have been summed up in a single sentence if I wasn’t wearing my Jabbering Hat. When it comes to the art of twenty-two men kicking a pig bladder around on a field nothing is certain.
